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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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What a great way to end the quest! With Kane and his devout followers exiting the Solar System via Threshold 19, Earth and Humanity has survived.

While some might've been disappointed that Kane didn't get a public trial, but we all know that humanity's continued existence is a must.

Anyways, I can't wait to see the next quest.
 
Vilegrave said:
I'm more curious about their reaction to the Tiberium on Venus, as it seems very likely that a chunk of them would start aiming to colonize Venus the same way GDI is aiming for Mars the moment they find out about it.

With the added complication that both GDI and Nod have to engage in some major projects to sort something out for that planet in the next 20-30 years as they have no idea how fast the Venusian Tiberium is spreading or when it'll reach the core.
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Considering the Soviet considered venus to be their planet, as compared to mars for america, and Nod, wibbly wobbly timeline wise arose feom the defunct Union, i would find it appropriate if the Scorpion adopted the Morningstar as their new homeworld, per se.
 
The goal I had when joining this quest was to preserve as much of the human race in game as feasible. And I believe we acomplished that. I hope our squid overlord will give a retrospective on how things went.

On my part I am satisfied with our accomplishments. To break things down in my totaly biased and completely vibes based Acomplishment Rating Report Card:

Infrastructure:
Our entire population is in High Quality Housing (Arcologies or equivalent) with room to spare. We have strengthened our logistics networks considerably by rail, sea, and rocket. I am very satisfied with our development of Infrastructure. It wasn't perfect as we saw during the regency war but I blame that on lack of Naval investment more then anything. Acomplishment Rating: A

Heavy Industry:
This is were I think some more long term planning would have been useful. It was our main source of Capital Goods and that was the limiting factor for a good portion of the campaign. The issue being the best sources of capital goods (Nuuk, Rekyavik, and North Boston) all required significant, dedicated time investment. Also the issue with the CCF plants. By the end of the campaign I think we'd solved those problems, but a bit of forethought could have avoided most of them. Also kinda salty we never finished Nuuk. Acomplishment Rating: B+

Light Industry:
Building up our Light Industry was not as much a priority compared to other sectors, and was used to compensate for economic factor deficiencies elsewhere. Very disapointed our automation specialist got ganked, but thems the breaks. Bergen was our major acomplishment here, and that probably saved us more headache then I credit it. Still we were not nearly focusing on it as much as other areas. Acomplishment Rating: B

Agriculture:
Here like with Heavy Industry a bit of forward planning would have saved us a lot of grief. Especially with the whole CRP debacle. However, we came back from that (mostly thanks to our NOD plant geneticist), and actually burned through all we wanted to acomplish. Acomplishment Rating: A-

Tiberium:
This is where we have spent the most dice and resources over the campaign. It is the heart of our industry and how we were able to acomplish everything else. From Glacier Mining to the Inhibitor network, this is where we slowed down th Tib long enough to bring Kane to the table. I'm disapointed we were unable to do more with the Forgotten research, and that rolling out the full inhibitor network took so long to do. The energy cost was significant, but I think rolling it out sooner would have kept the underground tib from being as much of a problem. Our limitations from Heavy Industry biting us there, same reason for the lack of Capital Goods for the Vein Mines. Still this is where we made the biggest difference from OTL, and is what allowed us to make the other acomplishments possible. Acomplishment Rating; A

Orbital:
We practically ignored this for a big part of the early quest, however the last two Plans really kicked this into overdrive and gave the GDI the most hope going forward. We didn't finish Aldrin, but that wasn't for lack of trying. This is where we spent the most of our efforts in long term planning out how to accomplish the most we could. From the Fusion rockets, to the various project cost reductions, we poured a lot of effort in reaching the milestones we did and I am happiest for our acomplishments here. Acomplishment Rating: A+

Services:
Like Agriculture and Light Industry, Services were less of a consistent priority across the campaign. That is not to say there weren't great things accomplished here which dramatically improved our accomplishments here and elsewhere. However, it seemed less of a priority compared to the drumbeat of Heavy Industry, Tiberium, Orbital, and Military. Still, this is probably where we have preserved the most of our species both in number and in quality of life in this campaign. Also we have inflicted catboys/girls on the galaxy. May Kane help our souls. Acomplishment Rating: B+

Military:
As I've alluded elsewhere, Military is an area I think needed that early investment, and like Orbital it got it eventually, but not until we were practically forced to. It certainly felt like there was a neverending stream of projects and we had to prioritize. Also because of the turnaround times, Military suffered the most from the lack of early investment. I wish we could have afforded to invest more in it earlier, but I don't think the decision to focus on Tiberium and our economic factors first and foremost was the wrong one. Acomplishment Rating: B-

Bureacracy:
While certainly the black sheep of the bunch, Bureacracy is the place were we made the most difference socially and diplomatically. Without our accomplishments here (the recruitment of NOD personel, integration of Yellow Zoners, Tiberium Surveys, various Conferences, etc) this would have been a much different campaign. Acomplishment Rating: A-
 
Lol. Nod AI defecting is the greatest victory of all. GDIs treatment of best boy Erehwon coming in clutch.

Turns out treating the AI as people is how you avoid skynet.

The Citadels gonna freak and our response is gonna be "why are you freaking out over our citizens? Did you not ask them what there problems were?"

I hope in the sequel we get lots of interaction with the krogan. They're history of destroying there homeworld fighting each other and then getting screwed over by aliens sort of mirrors humanity.
 
Great quest, and we all did a mostly great job. My biggest regret is that we didn't push mech technology far enough to start making Battlemechs. Hopefully that's something we can fix in the sequel.

I think my only standing question is what happened with the Gana. Nod is way ahead of GDI, but I'm not clear on what that means. GDI's eventual Gana seem like a creation they are happy with, but don't know what that is. Some sort of super human, powered by an incredible melding of biology and technology? Designed individuals made to be good at very specific tasks, but still mentally flexible enough to be part of society? Do they look more animals, or maybe even things from mythology? And how are they different from what Nod makes, and what is Nod making? It was all very generalized, and I don't have a mental imagine of what either group made.
 
Ithillid said:
With all of this, I am trying to run a balance, where on one hand, I want what I am writing to look and feel mass effect, but at the same time, recognize that this is a broader combined setting where yeah, there are absolutely differences.
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It helps that you can very easily go "Yes, this technology is something that the Citadel Races could develop. They just need to either have focused down the technology paths that are typically neglected once you gain access to Eezo, require access to a substance which they have specifically been denied to allow easy production of the needed materials or alternatively they can spend a thousand years or so of focused technological development to come across it. They chose path 3 and haven't focused in the right areas yet so that thousand years is more like two and a half thousand years plus."

Then when you add in the fact that there's a bunch of technology which might emerge from breakthroughs that occur due to chance, a confluence of factors that require specific conditions to appear or someone who knows what sorts of things to look into to give someone a bit of advice about where to look for improvements and suddenly it's easily believable the Citadel Races lack a bunch of our things. Or at least, lack the advanced versions we've got.

Sure, they have have the predecessors to the Crystal Beam Lasers but they haven't worked out the tricks needed to make a good crystal for the laser, let alone all the supporting systems associated with a Crystal Beam Laser rather than the other forms of laser like Phased Array Lasers and the like. Give them time to iterate and poke their crystal fabrication capabilities and eventually they'll stumble across the right doped mix that gets them looking at the large, durable, high energy output crystals needed for the CBL rather than a more advanced fibre optic system.

Hell, they likely have Endo-Steel already if not the successor to Endo-Steel and what Endo-Steel they do have is going to be exceptionally fine tuned for it's role compared to ours. They just don't have access to STU doping as a thing so fall way behind on that aspect and even with more standard element alloys for the Endo-Steel, they likely avoid uses the rarer elements in the mix because even with space mining those are difficult to find in bulk (thus expensive to use) until you start planetcracking or core mining whereas we just adjust the Tiberium Refinement output to favour those elements.

Repeat this in a great many places and then toss in different legal and 'stressor' environments and you have an easy explanation for why the Citadel is so far behind compared to us in many areas. Admittedly, it does leave the question of what the hell is up with their AI technology that it took that long for the Quarians to produce large scale AI production and even more that said AI was an accidental development of Software Unrestricted AI compared to their Hardware Locked AI that seems to be the only real type they can produce other than VI. That I can't answer other than going "Fucking Reapers, Leviathans, Collectors or other entities fiddling around behind the scenes" and that's a semi-dissatisfactory answer without a lot more detail.

Hell, you have an easy explanation for why the Citadel Races are so cautious regarding biotech associated with species creation when they've got the bio-conservative Asari (they are, it's basically something built into their species in certain ways) as a major power, the Salarians who likely keep messing it up and needing to clean up the disaster and then there's the Rachni. Also the Krogan which is a combination of 'Just as bad as the Rachni in their own way' and 'Fucking Salarians making a mess of things and everyone else not bothering to clean it up properly when they could'.

Other things as I said above are a bit more mysterious or are just 'yeah, they are working on it but it's not a focus, seems lacking compared to Eezotech or they just haven't had the right people come across the right data to make the right breakthroughs'.
 
It may not have been the best ending, but it was a good ending. We ended with hope for a better future for mankind, free from fear of Tiberium (Venus aside).

Now, watch Kane reappear with his people to help tip the balance so humanity and the Council kill the Reapers. :whistle:
 
liquidsnake4673 said:
The Citadels gonna freak and our response is gonna be "why are you freaking out over our citizens? Did you not ask them what there problems were?"
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They literally already had AI freely walking the Citadel. They were purged during the Morning War but it's still in living memory for older Asari and the odd Krogan that hasn't managed to off himself. AI are still researched and created, it's just heavily restricted and you need a license. Kind of the scientific backburner.

They know how to make stable, socialized AI, it's just not considered worth it for whatever socioeconomic calculus is involved with those kinds of decisions. The Geth happening means they probably don't want to risk AI in the kinds of large-scale projects they would excel at coordinating, and for pretty much any lesser task they already have incredibly sophisticated VI. Like, the Quarians have Ancestor VI that are essentially a holocron and significantly blur the line between VI and AI. Though on the other end of the spectrum you have the bootleg Shepard VI.

And for what it's worth, they've dealt with existing digital life pretty fairly despite them being in legal limbo. Multiple diplomatic envoys were sent into Geth space and they've been keeping the Quarians from suicidally poking that particular hornets nest despite their cultural death march. If the Geth make peace with their creators or even win the war, nobody really bats an eye. An entire digitally uploaded species? Odd but not an issue. Over in Andromeda SAM had all of one quest dealing with anti-AI sentiment despite being a critical part of the Initiative, and you can sort of adopt an old Angara AI who mostly wants to socialize with SAM.

Like. There would be some cultural unrest to cephalons, because people are dumb panicky animals. But there are also literal AI advocacy groups to counter them. As long as it's only a social issue I don't think there would be a real problem.

Except the Quarians. They're going to flip shit.

Also this is assuming the fusion universe didn't butterfly away... literally any part of the Geth issue. AI and VI seem a lot more accessible in the Command and Conquer universe, which might affect something. Even something as simple as the Morning War ending with the Geth sympathizers surviving could have prevented the Citadel AI purge because there would be a definitive non-Geth faction remaining on Rannoch to show the galaxy it was the Quarians fucking around and finding out, not the Geth rebelling without cause.

Edit- or, from the Citadel side of things, maybe AI were better established before the Geth became an issue so a purge was politically untenable because they're basically established citizens. This actually feels like a direct result of AI tech being more accessible.
 
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Ithillid said:
Leaping ahead in hologram technology has been an interesting experience, mostly because it represents a substantial change in how holograms are used. Previous examples have been things that require containment for the most part – highly specialized, highly controlled environments. The new generation however is quite different, being essentially able to form an augmented reality. However, there are still some noticeable limitations, primarily to do with color. Mostly, it struggles with multiple colors in a single projection. While layered projections are possible, for a lot of purposes, simple monochrome works just as well, and can be fit into a much smaller projection system.
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For rather obvious reason, a largerly brute force solution to the limitation of "monochrome works much better" in the holograms, via layered projections, would probably need 3x or 4x projections in the same place, and a corresponding increase in the projector size.

You know, depending on if we are going for RGB or CMYK for the full color option.
 
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The alignment on a 3x RGB color hologram projector is going to be a bit tricky- not insurmountable but tricky- if you want the resulting holographic image to look right from any and every angle. Since this is soft-SF midair freestanding holography, you basically need all three monochrome component holograms to be fully superimposed so that none of them drowns out the other. I suspect you'd see a tendency for the individual projectors to drift out of alignment, at which point you get discoloration or things that look red on one side and blue on the other or something.
 
So holograms having chromatic aberration is a sign that you need to do maintenance on them again?
 
True enough.

Actually the projectors will probably have implemented a quick-and-dirty method of realigning via base programming.

So to preface, take QR code. No matter how many meaningful pixels there are, you'll always see specific patterns in a grid arrangement, from four minimum and going upwards. They denote one corner of the QR code and its size.

So the same idea will be used as a base. Give a color grid that's supposed to have fixed color values at specific points, have an inbuilt optical sensor take the readings, then adjust how projector projects a hologram based on the readings. Since the holo projector is supposed to be able to fill the entire area with its color if need be anyway, a routine check (probably on startup, at that), will allow the projector to automatically adjust where it projects the image by a few millimeters to the side and compensate for the drift.



And if the chromatic aberration crops up anyway, then the issue is probably more serious than previously thought.

(Also for much the same reason of being able to fill the entire area with its color from necessity, any such projector would probably be able to switch to monochrome mode).
 
Faraway-R said:
So the same idea will be used as a base. Give a color grid that's supposed to have fixed color values at specific points, have an inbuilt optical sensor take the readings, then adjust how projector projects a hologram based on the readings. Since the holo projector is supposed to be able to fill the entire area with its color if need be anyway, a routine check (probably on startup, at that), will allow the projector to automatically adjust where it projects the image by a few millimeters to the side and compensate for the drift.
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So a holographic test card?



But with spheres where the circles are and we stick Kane's big, insufferable mug in place of the Chief.
 
well... that was a bit of a cop out of an ending.
For all that we are told the wars were won by GDI, in the end it was NOD who won.
Kane got what he wanted, GDI did Kane´s work, NOD continues to exist and will spread beyond Earth, GDI leadership decided to support Kane lies and i think there were supposed to be some Scryn left in Jupiter?

I mean, just allowing NOD to leave earth ensures hostile first contact and, later, relations when they inevitably smuggle Tiberium around
 
alvus said:
well... that was a bit of a cop out of an ending.
For all that we are told the wars were won by GDI, in the end it was NOD who won.
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That's because you've defined "GDI winning" as "Nod being entirely conquered and subsumed by GDI," and "anything other than Nod being entirely conquered and subsumed by GDI" as "Nod winning."

By that standard, Nod 'won,' but by that very lopsided standard, GDI never had the realistic capacity to 'win' in the first place. At any point during the quest timeline, a total war in which GDI attempted to fully conquer Nod would predictably result in GDI taking so much damage that the 'victorious' GDI would have been unable to save the Earth from tiberium.

So by putting together such a definition of victory, you've set your expectations in such a way as to ensure that no outcome could plausibly be satisfactory by the standards you're applying.

No conflict can truly be won in the eyes of a person whose theory of victory is itself self-defeating.

Kane got what he wanted, GDI did Kane´s work, NOD continues to exist and will spread beyond Earth, GDI leadership decided to support Kane lies and i think there were supposed to be some Scryn left in Jupiter?

I mean, just allowing NOD to leave earth ensures hostile first contact and, later, relations when they inevitably smuggle Tiberium around
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Much of what you say here is either flatly untrue or requires very strange and dare I say unreasonable interpretatins of the meanings of words.

Did "Kane get what he wanted?" Well, Kane wanted a lot of things. For a long time, roughly an entire human lifetime, Kane seems to have wanted to rule the Earth. He didn't get that. It seems clear that Kane wanted to prove that Nod's way of doing things, his way, is superior. He failed utterly. Kane got to leave Earth, granted. If your idea of "victory" cannot exist without Kane being imprisoned and/or executed, then yeah, that didn't happen... but then, we didn't really have the means to make that happen, I would say, without sacrificing the survival of the Earth.

Did GDI "do Kane's work?" I don't even know what you mean by that. GDI built a system of machines to Kane's specifications, but GDI built the machines because of a goal that GDI and Kane agreed upon in advance. I don't see how that counts as "doing Kane's work."

Nod continues to exist and will spread beyond Earth, yes, but as mentioned above, if your theory of victory means that there can be no victory without that, then your theory of victory was always, by nature, self-defeating, in the literal sense of "trying to win would result in GDI defeating itself."

GDI leadership "decided to support Kane lies?" What do you mean, except perhaps for Seo deciding not to try to stop Kane from leaving the planet? I'm not seeing how that counts as 'supporting Kane lies.' GDI frankly wanted Kane gone too, because it is not to GDI's advantage if Kane stays around. He's untrustworthy and wildly hated by so many GDI citizens, and at the same time any attempt to take him into custody on GDI's part would predictably have kicked off a war with Nod and ruined everything. Kane deciding to fuck off into the cosmos and leave Earth behind was frankly probably best for GDI. And as far as I know, Kane made the modifications that would allow him to leave using Nod's own resources, and Nod didn't fall behind on its TCN targets according to Seo, so what's what's the harm?

And "were there Scrin left arund Jupiter?" Well, yes. GDI went out and killed them all during the timeskip. Bloody operation, didn't go as well as we might have liked, but the job got done. What's the problem?
 
Victory is when the protagonist faction has utterly defeated, demoralized and humiliated the loathsome, despicable, hated enemy, executed their leaders in public, absorbed and culturally homogenised what remains of them into the big protagonist state blob. Solving this conflict nonviolently is totally cringe actually :p
 
Something about Kane unrelated to to current discussion. So Kane was like, the organic half of a spaceship made up of a fusion of organic and machine intelligence. He has a penchant for manipulating things long term from the shadows, and has an uncanny ability to inspire extreme loyalty and devotion in his followers. Now he's gone to rejoin his enigmatic people, who are all also similar starships driven by hybrid organic/machine intelligences.

Is Kane a Reaper? You kinda have to reach to make that description fit, but that's not uncommon for crossovers.
 
cB557 said:
Something about Kane unrelated to to current discussion. So Kane was like, the organic half of a spaceship made up of a fusion of organic and machine intelligence. He has a penchant for manipulating things long term from the shadows, and has an uncanny ability to inspire extreme loyalty and devotion in his followers. Now he's gone to rejoin his enigmatic people, who are all also similar starships driven by hybrid organic/machine intelligences.

Is Kane a Reaper? You kinda have to reach to make that description fit, but that's not uncommon for crossovers.
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honestly Kane's race sounds inspired by the Bentusi of Homeworld
 
cB557 said:
Something about Kane unrelated to to current discussion. So Kane was like, the organic half of a spaceship made up of a fusion of organic and machine intelligence. He has a penchant for manipulating things long term from the shadows, and has an uncanny ability to inspire extreme loyalty and devotion in his followers. Now he's gone to rejoin his enigmatic people, who are all also similar starships driven by hybrid organic/machine intelligences.

Is Kane a Reaper? You kinda have to reach to make that description fit, but that's not uncommon for crossovers.
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We have a fairly specific description of Kane's species and they're not Reapers. Also, we have a pretty good idea what the technology of Kane's species looks like because it's what comes from the Tacitus, and that's not Reaper tech (lots of mention of tiberium, no mention of eezo). Furthermore, at no point has the Tacitus or any other thing of Kane's shown any sign of being capable of Reaper-style indoctrination.

So no, I'm pretty sure Kane is not a Reaper, even if he is part of a race that has synthesized its individual organic beings with starship AIs.
 
The thing about us seemingly not winning over NOD is...we didn't choose that. We chose the option where we actually acknowledged that NOD had legitimate grievances, that both sides had committed crimes against one another. We didn't chose to assimilate NOD once and for all, we chose to try and reconcile with them so that NOD and GDI could exist on the same planet without constantly fighting against one another.

So complaining about us not winning over NOD really seems like it's missing the point of what exactly we voted for in the first place. In addition...what exactly would having NOD help out more with the TCN actually accomplish in terms of benefits? It really sounds like NOD wouldn't have been able to match GDI's contributions, so the whole thing would just have taken even longer to build.
 
Well, it's been a busy time, but glad to see the ending here, and the beginnings of the healing of the wounds left by both the wars and Tiberium.

Some thoughts:
-The orbital forges, which will likely include fabricator technology, are going to be an impressive boost for Starbound's aspirations towards expansion. Also, very glad we got the Fluyt shipyards done.
-Very nice to see the messy, hard, and worthwhile process of diplomacy and beginning to resolve the differences between GDI and Nod (and within Nod) with less ongoing bloodshed.
-The setting aside of much of the planet's surface for rewilding is great - it will be a long, long process, but healing is not just for humanity. Of course, I imagine that post-TCN geology will be a very exciting field.
-I appreciate seeing Kane being able to (entirely metaphorically) let his hair down and socialize when he is not in a "has to be in charge" situation.
-Not too much SPAAACE! stuff, but still we're in a strong position to work on it once the TCN is complete, and it's good to see the Visitor base in the Jovians dealt with.
-The Forgotten will be with us, and while it's kinda sad to see their culture likely dying out, it's good to see the reasons for that culture being so distinct (various hardships, mostly) going away.
-I'm not unhappy about the political situation - I imagine that the coalition in charge is generally two out of [Militarist, Starbound, Socialist League], depending on which of their overall causes is less in favor, but... we'll see.
-Hooray for Erewhon being able to retire, and also for fluffy child-rearing gana!
-And Kane gets to go back to his people, and hopefully get the mental health care he knows he needs.

All in all, a satisfying conclusion to this chapter of human (and Cephalon) history.
 
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